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Friday, July 18, 2014

Vladimr Putin

MIGHT not be responsible for the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH70, but, assuming he armed those who committed this unspeakable, monstrous atrocity, he is sure as hell ACCOUNTABLE.

He gave them the weapons, the sophisticated weapons they otherwise would not need EXCEPT to shoot at high altitude aircraft. They did not need SA-11, phased-array guided Surface to Air Missiles to defend themselves from aerial attack by the Ukranian "Air Force." These were offensive weapons which had to be deployed in a large area following sophisticated training. Training his generals provided assuming these weren't in fact OPERATED by Russian regular military personnel. He armed them in the manner of a regular, modern army and he set them loose. These aren't weapons which any average soldier, let alone person, could have figured out how to fire. It required extensive, specific training to prosecute and shoot down an airliner flying at 35,000 feet. It requires connecting control radar, fire control computers and the firing platforms to each other, understanding those protocols AND knowing which buttons to press in which order to bring the radar online, to target the "right" aircraft, and finally to target, arm and fire the weapon.

These people, people who were trained almost certainly by active military personnel, appear (very strongly) to have killed almost 300 people, perhaps by mistake, but whether it was a mistake is NOT material. Assuming it's the Pro-Russian "separatists" (read Russian operatives) then he, PUTIN, is accountable for what they've done. Just like the bartender who gives the irresponsible drunk another drink and hands him the keys to the drunk's car, HE is accountable for their conduct once he gave them these weapons.

Damn Putin, damn his reckless, power-mad bear wrestling hide. He could have set the world on course to war with his irresponsibility. The vultures are circling and the hawks are calling. I hope the President decides to meet out justice for the guilty. I hope we isolate Russia on the world stage and that our European partners are willing to pay the price to do so, and do that which they've heretofore been unwilling to risk and to pay, and so President Obama had to go it alone. I hope we can avoid war and I believe Mr. Putin, assuming what appears almost certainly to be true, IS true, well, I believe Vladimr will burn in the hell of his own making forever. He'll certainly deserve it.

2 comments:

Putin made his bones working for the KGB. When he termed out as PM, and then INVENTED the office of President which he evidently will serve for life or whenever he tires of the throne.

This is the man who sees the Soviet Empire as the "Good Old Days", and his grab for The Crimea, and his attempted grab of Georgia (don't think he won't try again one the Ukraine is part of the Russian Empire again), and so on and so forth.

WB, I actually don't think Putin wants Russia in a war, but he is clearly desirous of and willing to act to absorb "unfriendly" neighbors. Belarus is a compliant, dictatorial neighbor, willing to play ball with Putin's plans, and so is probably quite safe from take-over. Georgia, the Ukraine, maybe one or more of the Baltic states (Estonia especially), may very well not be. My point is, I don't think he wants to create, nor can they likely afford to create, the kind of military power which was the USSR. Nor do I think he wants to use that military for a real, live shooting war with a powerful military opponent. Instead, he's a bully, a corrupt oligarch, happy to steal from his own people, abscond and extort from his neighbors and from Europe too. He's a petty, pompous man, vicious in the extreme, but an emperor without clothes. He's the most powerful man in his neighborhood, but hardly the world. He has power because of the oil and natural gas he controls. If Europe were to be smart and marginalize that energy supply over time, he'd fail. In short, he's a criminal thug, no mastermind. Those who claim he's crazy like a fox have misread him. He was stupid enough to give control of sophisticated arms to the wrong people, and they've burned him (albeit inadvertently). It may well end his hegemony. Those fools (like McCain) who claimed all this was as a result of some sort of US "weakness" were dead wrong. Putin would have done this to anyone, Teddy Roosevelt, Harry Truman and certainly to dimwitted GW Bush, because he didn't think he'd get caught. He didn't think (and he was right about that in part) that anyone would have the ability to monitor his aggression quite simply because it's so isolated, so totally under his nominal control (like Georgia). He's not Hitler. He's not insane like Hitler, he's not charismatic either. He's much more like Mousollini (sic), a brute in charge of a bungling military, and that's the bad part, he's just stupid enough that he could start a war he never intended to start.

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